Digitally Printed Artworks in the Christchurch Art Gallery Lifts

Taking the lift to somewhere unexpected

How many times have you stood in a lift, staring at boring doors as you head to your floor? Well, things have changed. There's now every reason to turn and face the wall, roof, or door closest to you. Spare a thought for whoever's stuck in the middle, and don't forget to step off when the doors open.

Client: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu

Event: Exhibits in the Gallery lifts

We worked with Christchurch Art Gallery to deliver three quite different looks across three lifts, each with its own artwork. Descriptions of the exhibits below are kindly supplied by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.

What we did:

Lift one

Séraphine Pick's lush watercolour offers a utopian vision in the car park elevator. As you travel between floors, you're transported into an inner world drawn from the artist's imagination. Pick's painting depicts groups of bathers in a pool surrounded by bush, with a canopy of kaponga, or silver tree fern, overhead, exploring the idea of failed utopian dreams. Commissioned to fit the exact proportions of the elevator, the original watercolour was reproduced as a large-scale digital print that immerses you in the detail of the brushwork, right down to its blots, blooms, drips and transparent washes.

Image: Séraphine Pick, Untitled (Bathers) (detail), 2015. Digital print to self-adhesive polyester film, from a watercolour. Courtesy of the artist and Hamish McKay Gallery, commissioned by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.

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Lift two

Reuben Paterson's sparkling elevator installation creates an unexpected space for contemplation and connection. Paterson covered the walls and ceiling in dense, velvety black, glitter-sprinkled cloth, giving the effect of travelling through a dark sky powdered with stars. In Māori cosmology, the separation of the sky and earth brings forth Te Ao Mārama, the world of light, signalling the coming of knowledge. Dancing with a thousand points of reflected light, Paterson's installation nods to traditional navigation as well as to the Māori name of the Gallery's building, Te Puna o Waiwhetu, the waters in which stars are reflected.

Image: Reuben Paterson, The End, 2016. Cotton fabric with metallic particles. Courtesy of the artist and Milford Galleries, commissioned by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.

Lift three

Marie Shannon's immersive installation explores love, loss, and the longing for emotional connection across distance. It's a melancholy, contemplative text and sound work, based on a series of letters sent by New Zealand artist Julian Dashper to his partner Marie Shannon while he was artist in residence in Aachen, Germany, in 1995.

Image: Marie Shannon, The Aachen Faxes, Christchurch remix, 2015. Flocked cast vinyl and sound. Courtesy of the artist.

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What they said:

"When Christchurch Art Gallery reopened at the end of 2015 after five years of earthquake repairs, we commissioned three artists to create works for three lifts in the Gallery. Part of the Gallery's Outer Spaces programme of art, which inhabits unusual and surprising spaces outside the normal confines of the building, works like these always raise interesting and novel challenges. Artists were commissioned to create works for an unusual space, and each responded in a unique way. Installations such as these are always a complex collaboration between artist, gallery staff, production companies, and Adgraphix, who, as always, rose to the challenge, offering valuable expertise and unique ways for each of these works to be realised."

— Peter Bray, Graphic Designer, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu

FAQs

Can artwork be adapted for unusual spaces like lifts?

Yes, artwork can be commissioned or reproduced to fit unusual proportions, such as an elevator interior, using large-scale digital print methods.

What print process is used to reproduce a painting at large scale?

Original artworks such as watercolours can be digitally reproduced onto self-adhesive film at large scale while retaining fine brushwork detail.

This is a look back at a past project. Exhibits described may no longer be on display, and details may have changed since it was first published, please confirm current gallery content before publishing.